Potty Mouth

In mid-November I had to call the plumber.

The toilet in the basement had been slow for months. The waste would flush down, but the TP would not, and the same bits would float around in the iron-tinged water for days.

So I didn't use it unless I absolutely had to. But then the toilet upstairs got plugged. And the stopper lever kept coming off its chain.

So the plumber came, but by then, the upstairs john had cleared itself. He fiddled around with the chain, though, and it worked again.

The basement stool was another matter. He put the snake down, and couldn't find a thing that could be blocking it. But it was undoubtedly blocked.

"I've got awful hard water here," I mentioned. "Do you think it could be calcium deposits plugging it up?"

He took a probe and checked the holes where the water jets are supposed to squirt out around around the rim of the bowl.

"Yes," he agreed, "these are full of lime."

He dug around a little more, but to little effect. "The real problem is this inlet at the bottom of the bowl. And I don't have a tool that'll clear the calcium out ofthere. And I don't know if there's a chemical that's safe for you to try."

"How about white vinegar?" I suggested.

"You could try it. If it wrecks the stool, you're no worse off than you are now."

And he took the minimum service fee for the call under my home warranty plan, and went away.

Well, I tried the vinegar. Four gallons of it, in the tank and the bowl, for two or three days. And it worked! I still can't get over how gratifying it is to see that water swirl around and take everything down in my basement potty.

However. The upstairs toilet still doesn't work as it should. The flapper chain clip started coming loose again and I resorted to a safety pin to keep it on the lever. But that problem was nothing compared to--

Well, let's be civilized and say only that no, one does not insist on putting old socks and whole boxes of Kleenex and half the contents of the cats' litterbox down the stool and expect it to flush. Not at all. But there are certain things any competent water closet should accommodate, and mine, from time to time, emphatically does not.

So this afternoon, I use it, flush it, and put down the lid. I've washed and am about to leave the room when I hear "Guh-loomp! Guh-loomp!"

I turn around. My tabby kitten is lying on the lid. Oh, no, is he about to be sick?

But no. The noise is coming from farther down, from the bottom of the toilet bowl.

I shoo the cat off, open the lid, and see almost no water in the bowl. I flush the toilet. Water pours in, nothing goes down. I give it a few jabs with the plunger and flush it again.

Four-alarm red-alert MISTAKE!!!! The water flooded in and didn't go down and here came the potty water, up, up, up and over the rim and down onto the floor! And it wasn't clean water, either.

I turn off the valve to stop the deluge, then start to work again with the plunger. Of course, that splashes more water out onto the floor. I try easing it in at first, but soon discover that unless you push a good big bubble of air in with it, the plunger just won't work.

So I did what had to be done, and got the stool unstopped.

About then I noticed that oh! looks like there isn't as much water on the floor as I'd thought! Having fetched a couple old bathtowels from the basement, I wiped up the spilled water. And while I was at it, I cleaned the iron stains out of the toilet bowl. And got the vacuum cleaner out and sucked up the cat-hair bunnies from behind the sink and around the water dish and then got a clean towel and washed the rest of the bathroom floor.

Lovely! How nice to have a clean bathroom floor going into the new year, regardless of why I had to do it!

But then I went downstairs to get the clothes basket to put the dirty towels in. And in the kitchen I hear a funny noise: Dripp! dripp! dripp!

Oh, damn, that stupid toilet water went down those bloody bad joints between the wall tile and the floor vinyl, and it was dripping through the joint in the kitchen ceiling sheetrock!

Worse, it was coming down the walls and making big water bubbles of the paint!

Crap.

(So to speak.)

Same damn thing happened last time the upstairs john overflowed, about three and a half years ago, before I got the kitchen repainted. But now it is repainted and oh, no, don't I have enough on my 2008 house To Do list without adding "Touch up kitchen ceiling and wall paint"?

Not to mention "Put a big honking bead of tub caulk around the base of the upstairs bathroom walls, you idiot!" Which I bloody well should have done after the first time it flooded.

Could be worse, I guess. The ceiling joint's in a handy place to relieve the pressure, and it is sheetrock, so I don't have to worry about falling plaster. And the textured finish I have on the walls should keep the water bubble places (which I poked with a needle to drain them) from being too glaringly apparent until I can get around to repainting them.

But still. This was not part of the 2008 plan!

Guess that's part of the joy of home ownership. And several gallons of white vinegar is definitely on my list for my next Costco run. The upstairs can would benefit from two or three days of the 3% acid treatment.

I mean, if it's not calcium deposits that's clogging it up, what could it be?

A Dream, or a Financial Nightmare?

I got a call this morning from the repairman at the local family-owned appliance dealer's.

It'll cost me almost $200 to replace the wonky thermostat in my oven. Maybe more.

That is, if anyone can sell them a thermostat for a going-on-eleven-year-old stove.

If they can't get the part, I get to buy a new stove.

Sorry, I mean, I'll have to buy a new stove.

Get to.

Have to!

Get to!!!

I admit it: I'd really like the excuse to buy this Frigidaire. You know, the one with the cool (or should I say, hot) convection oven converter feature and the regular, medium, and high-powered burners, the big honking oven window, and all the other bells and whistles.

I've been on-line researching prices on the models I saw there, as well as dropping round in person to my local Lowe's, Sear's, and Home Depot. And the price at the family-owned shop is the best going, especially factoring in free delivery, set-up, and haul-away.

But I have no business buying a new stove. I'm still not working full time and my income is drastically limited. Even paying to get the one I have fixed ain't exactly in the budget.

If it's a junker, I really ought to be sensible and get an ultra-cheap pedestrian model with manual oven cleaning and knobs that turn things on and off and that's it.

That's what I ought to do.

But I don't wanna. If I do that, I'll be in conscience stuck with the thing for the next ten years. Or until I sell the house, whichever comes first.

And how is anyone going to be thrilled with my kitchen if it's got only a boring basic range?

So that would justify my buying the model I want, right?

Wrong?

Well, I guess I'll see if the part is available for the eld beast. And make a common-sense decision from that.

(Right.)

Sore Winner

Last Saturday, a circular arrived from the local family-owned appliance store. It announced their "One & Only WINTER Clearance Event!" with "Our BIGGEST Savings of the Year!" Not only that, but I could also enter their Scratch 'n Match contest to see if I had won one of three prizes, the top one being a $10,000 kitchen makeover!!

Well, I don't need that. My kitchen is one of the most pulled-together rooms of my very un-pulled-together house. But I scratched the silver stuff off the number dot anyway.

Did not say "Sorry, You Have Not Won." There was a number there, all right.

But the winning numbers weren't on the circular. Oh. Guess you have to ask about it at the store.

And I needed to stop by there anyway. Because last week when I was about to launch into my big Christmas cookie baking campaign, my oven went haywire. I'd set it for 350, it'd stay there long enough to do one batch, but then the temperature would start to climb. 400, 500, 600 and on and on! Burnt cookies! Smoke alarms going off on every floor! General annoyance and frustration!

If one of their guys couldn't fix my oven, maybe this One & Only WINTER Clearance Event! could give me a line on a replacement stove. And I guessed I'd best do it quickly, since according to the circular, "WINTER" ends on January 1st.

So I walked into the appliance dealer's this afternoon, again thinking how it'd be "just my luck" to win the kitchen makeover, when the room that really needs it is the bathroom.

But I was really there to look at stoves. And I did.

The only one that really fits my specifications is about $150 more than I'd like to spend right now. And the model with the feature that could really get me excited about spending the money (convention oven conversion at the flip of a switch--whoo-whoo!) runs an additional $100 more.

And neither of these appeared to be part of the One & Only WINTER Clearance Event!

Hmm. I think I'll bring the info on my existing cranky stove in and see if they can simply fix the overheating problem. Their repairmen should be familiar with the beast, since my previous owners bought it there and this shop has been out to fix things on it before.

I was headed out the door when I remembered to ask the salesman, "Oh, yeah. How does this contest work?" He took me back to the service desk, where they had the winning numbers posted.

And what the hell, if all my numbers didn't match for one of the prizes. A "3 Day/2 Night Vacation Getaway."

Oh. That's nice. I actually won something. Oh!

"Something" being hotel accommodations for two at any one of quite a wide range of destinations, as close as just up the road, so to speak, or as far away as Honolulu, Hawaii.

I was aware of not being as excited as I might be. Maybe I wanted to stay cool so I could understand all the fine print on the redemption certificate. Maybe I wanted to keep my expectations down as to the quality of the hotels in question.

Maybe I was feeling inadequate for not being married and having an automatic other half of the "for two" to take up the other side of the deal.

Yes, well. I do like travel. And I do have girlfriends who'd enjoy going off on a larking kind of trip like this. And a good handful of the listed destinations were within driving distance.

So this evening I got ahold of my friend Frieda*, and we're going to visit Colonial Williamsburg sometime next spring, about the time we both celebrate our birthdays.

But as I was driving away from the appliance dealers, I found myself thinking, "Well, dammit. If I had the luck to win one of the prizes, why couldn't it have been the $10,000 kitchen makeover? I could have done a lot of good in the way of new appliances and a decent floor and countertops and some new lighting with that kind of dough, even if the cabinets and my adorable faux finish paint job are just fine. Why couldn't my luck just pushed me a little way further over? Answer me that, hmm?"

But instead, I had to win a lousy free hotel accommodation certificate. Sheesh.

The other prize was one of three iPhones.

Well, I console myself, I don't want to switch over to AT&T anyway.

Yeah, but I could have sold the thing on eBay and made some cash!

Shut up, kid, and be grateful! You and Frieda* are going to go to Williamsburg in the spring and you're going to look at antique buildings and pretty gardens and you're going to enjoy it all very, very much!

So there. And stop being a sore winner!
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*Made-up name

O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast

This past August I read a novel by English author Rosamunde Pilcher called Winter Solstice. The main part of the action is set deep in December in a town on the far northwest coast of Scotland. She did such a fine job of describing the snow, the rain, the cold winter weather, that when I'd open the door to let the dog out I'd be surprised to feel the balmy breezes of a southwestern Pennsylvania summer.

And I was impressed how convincingly Mrs. Pilcher depicted her characters going out into this weather without moaning or complaining. They were continually out visiting, shopping, walking the dog, walking themselves, and the conditions seemed always to strike them as bracing, or envigorating, or, at the most, challenging.

Gosh, how admirable! Once winter has set in, whatever happens in my back yard stays there till next spring. In the dead of winter, once I'm inside I hardly want to open the door to pick up the mail!

But there's a basis for all this Pilcherian cheerfulness. As the creator of her novelistic world, she decreed that her characters should have a "well-built Victorian house" to live in and enough pounds and pence to keep the central heat going comfortably and to pay for logs to throw on the sitting room fire whenever wanted. It's easy to face inclement weather with good cheer when you know the house you'll return to is toasty and warm.

I wish I could rewrite my own current life story that way. But alas, no. I finally had enough and turned on the furnace night before last, and the highest it's going this winter is 61 degrees when I'm home and awake and 56 at night.

No, I'm not trying to reduce my carbon footprint. I'm just trying to reduce the drain on my wallet.

It's been all right so far. Really. The temperature outside hasn't gotten below the low 30s and the double-glazed windows are shut and locked. It helps having three cats to act as live hot water bottles, too.

I'll see how it goes once it gets colder. I suppose turning up the thermostat a bit is preferable to my sitting on my icy hands whining. Thinking of other and older British novels, the proverbial drafty 19th century manse may seem romantic, but living in a house that feels like one is not.

Ghosts in My Garden

This is what my camera captured in my back garden this chilly late October night . . . "I see dead people . . . !"

Or dead something, at any rate. These "shrouds" are purposed to protect the last of my sweet peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes, as well as the newest canes of the climbing rose, from a heavy frost that's forecast for early tomorrow morning. But judging from what I observed when I took the dog out early this morning, the covers may be too late. We got frost up here in the Valleys last night.

Still, I gotta try. There's a lot of peppers on those bushes that'll be fit to eat if they get just a few days riper.

Checking In

Barring Wednesday's theological cyber glitch, I haven't posted for the past week.

And I haven't posted about productive work on the house for I think a week yet again.

That's because, barring routine housework and yardwork, I haven't gotten any productive work on the house done for the past week or two.

It's only partially because of the four-day-a-week AutoCAD class I started a week ago yesterday. It's mostly because in all my current projects, I've met some sort of check or delay or brick wall. And not wanting to do the bitch-and-moan polka, I've said nothing.

After all, you, dear readers (all two of you), want to hear how cleverly I'm solving the problems, not how they're making me wonder what was it, exactly, I didn't like about landlords.

But on the theory that it's more fun to read about the messes fellow-housebloggers get into before they emerge in shining and exemplary success than to plod through the self-glorifying sagas of those who never drive a nail wrong, I'll give a rundown of what I'm embroiled with and how I'm at least trying to take care of it:

Sanding and repainting the Adirondack chairs. Decided to use my Black & Decker Mouse sander to even out the old paint, but I was out of the Velcro (TM) -backed sandpaper sheets that go on it. Lowe's and Home Depot don't carry them. They're hideously expensive even online. But hooray, I found an outfit called Online Industrial Supply, that would sell me 10-yard rolls of fuzzy-backed sandpaper in my choice of grit for a very reasonable price. The two rolls I ordered came couple of days thereafter, and I'm using the last B&D sheet as a template to cut new ones to fit my Mouse. It's going to work great, and I'll get back on the job this weekend, as soon as I finish my AutoCAD homework or the humidity goes down, whichever comes first. Or last.

Reseeding the back yard. Got that done last Saturday. The seeding part, I mean. But the recipe I was using for repairing a dog-damaged lawn says to cover the seed with a quarter inch of compost. I was thinking compost would be too acidic, and I bought five bags of humus-y topsoil instead. It's lovely, rich, black dirt. It's also sopping wet. Quarter inch cover? An inch and a half, more likely! Not counting what sticks to my hands.

I tried emptying two bags worth into the garden cart, to let the dirt dry in the sun. But of course then the rains came. Dirt can't get very dry covered with a tarp . . .

Finally yesterday I said Oh, phooey, and scattered those two bags worth over the newly-seeded area as far as it would cover. It will probably just smother the seeds, but what can you do? The sugar maple tree has started its annual leaf dump, so it's all equal. I'll just have to try again in the spring.

Recovering my drafting board, etc. This is very annoying. The vinyl cover will not lie down flat, even with double-sided tape under it. You'd think after a week or more of resting, it'd behave itself. But noooooo! And it has to be flat, or you get those ugly gray smears up and down your drawing when you slide your parallel bar.

At least, when those of us who still think some architectural drafting should be done by hand slide our parallel bars!

I had an interview (yes!) with another hand-drafting architect this past Tuesday. While we were at it, I asked her about her experiences with covering her board. Told me, she doesn't try to tape the cover down. Just lets the parallel bar hardware hold it to the substrate. And I guess it flattens out eventually.

So I'll try that. But just in case I want to try the tape again, I gave the plywood board a coat of primer this evening. Maybe the sticky didn't work because it was absorbed by the bare wood grain.

Once my studio's put back together, I can get back to real house projects like woodwork stripping and floor sanding and redesigning the upstairs bathroom around the new kittens' litterbox.

That is, unless I'm consuming all my time trying to keep up in computer drafting class. If you don't hear from me before Thanksgiving, blame that.

Or you can blame the dog and the cats. Yes, you could assuredly blame them.

Mysteries Revealed, or A Trip to the County Courthouse

This noon I was down at my new bank picking up my signed copies of my HELOC documents. As a by-the-way, I asked the loan officer, "If I want to find out exactly how old my house is and who owned it before me, should I ask over at the county courthouse?"

"Sure. It's the Recorder of Deeds Office. Go on over. They won't be busy right now."

(It's handy living in the county seat, with the courthouse just a few blocks away.)

So I went and inquired. And found out some things I hadn't expected to learn.

The legend around my neighborhood is that the land was a fruit farm up until 1925 or so. That about that time, the old farming couple died and their grown children didn't want to take on the orchards. That the heirs platted the land and sold it off for building lots, and barring the original farmhouse across the street and the old carriage house down the block, all the dwellings here date from the late 1920s or thereafter.

Well. That's not what it says at the Recorder of Deeds.

The area may well have been a fruit farm-- the plat is called "Groveland Plan." But it was platted and registered in June of 1889.

As for ownership of my lot* and its "appurtenances," it goes like this:

Prior to his death in November 1911, it was owned by Edward J. Allison. It then passed to his children, with a life-interest held by his widow Margaret M. Allison.

19 June 1916, Margaret M. Allison and her adult children Margaret and Dwight liquidated all their considerable property in the plat for the benefit of their minor brother and sister, selling "my" lot to Romaine A. Wilkinson and his wife Laura D.

15 April 1920, the Wilkinsons sold the property to George Henry and Cora Lezonia Jeffrey.

16 April 1920, the Jeffreys sold it to Laurie H. and Kathryn G. McLaughlin.

(There must be a story here. Were the McLaughlins family to the Jeffreys? Was Kathryn a Jeffrey by birth?).

This much I learned from actually looking at the recorded deeds. What follows is from the clerk's print-out:

1 January 1930, Kathryn G. McLaughlin purchased the property (from the estate?) for $4,600.

The next day, 2 January 1930, she sold it to Kathryn C. McLaughlin (her daughter??) for $1.

30 November 1981, Kathryn C. McLaughlin sold the property to Mary K. Soltis for $45,000.

25 June 1987, it was purchased for $1 by Mary Kathryn and James Neri (Hmmm. Are Mary K. Soltis and Mary Kathryn Neri one and the same? I suspect so). These are my POs-1, my Victorianizing previous owners. (Bless their hearts!)

28 February 1997, the Neris sold the land and improvements to my immediate POs, John A. and Kate A. Carpenter for $96,500.

And on 28 August 2003, I, Kate H., bought it from them.

Do you see a pattern here? It was so astonishing to the Deeds clerk that she dropped everything to help me search. Ever since 1920, this property has been owned by someone named Kathryn/Katherine or Kate!

Too strange . . .

But as to the house itself, the Deeds clerk brought up an assessment document stating that it was built in 1916! And she was anxious to point out that it might be older than that and probably is.

What difference does it make the the Sow's Ear is at least ten years older than I thought it was?

It's a matter of spirit as I go about the improvements. It assures me that I'm not abusing the original intention of the house by redoing it with a Craftsman or Arts and Crafts feel. Before, I felt I needed to curb my enthusiasm: after all, I'd tell myself, the house could actually date from the 1930s; maybe I should be going for that sort of style. But no. Now I know my instincts were correct.

And now I know what to look for for examples and inspiration.

There's a lot more I can find out, but that's all I had time for today.

The immediate remaining mystery is, why didn't I run over to the courthouse before and find this out a whole lot sooner?

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*My land is actually portions of two lots of the original 1889 plat, but for style's sake, I call it one lot.